Why Btonze Age?

[Anomalocaris]

The Maginot Line was a technological triumph of how to address the problems of the prior war.  The French built it on the assumption that another German attack would bog down into trench warfare again.

They were mistaken.  But they sure as hell were ready if they had been right.

It's a myth that Maginot line was predicated on a return to trench warfare.  

Maginot line was actually meant to free up the main body of the French army from a static defense of the entire French eastern frontier, and allow it to instead be held back as a mobile reserve.

It was not an unreasonable solution to the problem France learned that it would always face in a war with Germany, which is France is inferior to Germany in manpower, and can not count on creating creating a more powerful strategic reserve than the Germans can, so can not achieve the situation where France can achieve sufficient local superiority at the critical needed to gain a critical victory, if it had to spread its army to defend its entire frontier.   Therefore the French decided the it needed to economize on the manpower needed to hold its frontier via the use of heavy fortification.  This would force the Germans to commit most of the German army to attach the French frontier while allowing the French army to hold back the main body of its army and concentrate it as a powerful strategic reserve able to meet any German break through from a position of relative strength, and also able to deliver a attack in greater strength than what the Germans can field as their own reserve.

Where the French failed was it didn't extend the maginot line to the north sea.  So instead of being able to hold its main army back as a strategic reserve, it had to commit it far forward early on to plug the gap, thus allowing the Germans to bypass it and encircle it.  

Even this was completely serendipitous for the Germans.   All along, the German army had meant to plough head on into the French army in Belgium.  In which case something like repeat of wwi trench warfare blood bath would have resulted, and given the superiority of Anglo-French equipment, there is no real reason to suspect the Germans would have eventually won it.  

It was only the fact that the original German plan become compromised almost at the last minute when a staff officer carrying the plan crash landed in Belgium territory, that led the Germans scrambling to come up with a new, as it turned out war winning, plan at the very last minute.

So don't think that, even with all of its faults, the French army really was that hapless or hopeless as popular history paints it.   All of French army's problems were not enough to have cause it to lose the battle of France.  Only a last miute change of plans by the Germans, due to a major fuck up by the Germans, that cost the French the battle.